Secrets of Death (17 page)

At the subsequent inquest, the coroner had said the taunting youths were partly responsible for the boy’s death. Despite the coroner’s comments, no one had ever been arrested or charged for their role in the incident. The trouble was, there was no specific offence that people could be charged with if all they were doing was shouting comments.

There had been similar incidents around the country,
so it wasn’t just a Derbyshire problem. For Cooper, this was more than mindless insensitivity and a lack of concern for another human being. People had become passive consumers of tragedy, incapable of separating reality from entertainment. Now smartphone users were engaging in the tragedy itself, goading a suicide to his death so they could share the footage on Facebook and YouTube.

Like it or not, there were people out there who liked watching someone die.

‘So, you’re talking about a sociopath or psychopath of some kind,’ said Branagh.

‘Yes, ma’am.’

He’d realised that on his way up the corridor, as the lights went on and off. In fact, what he had in mind was the very definition of a psychopath. While one in four people might be unbalanced in some way, there was another statistic that was even more disturbing. One in ten went so far as to have sociopathic tendencies.

And they became the violent psychopaths. Their violence was planned, purposeful and emotionless, reflecting a detached and disassociated mental state. They were motivated by a desire for control and dominance. Their attitude was one of absolute entitlement.

Most of all, psychopaths often possessed an almost demonic ability to manipulate others. They could persuade their victims out of everything they owned, even their lives. He thought of the leaders of religious cults who led their followers to their deaths. They might
even believe in their own lies, convince themselves of their own omnipotence.

‘Yes, someone out there thinks he’s become a god,’ said Cooper. ‘A god with the power of life and death.’

David
Kuzneski had lived in the Totley area of Sheffield. His street was right on the southwestern edge of the city, close to the moorland that began almost at the city boundaries. From here, you could see the outline of Blacka Moor, where a footpath through Cowsick Bog had recently been relaid with stone slabs recycled from disused cotton mills in Lancashire and dropped in by helicopter.

Cooper wondered if Kuzneski had spent much time up there, braving the quagmires of Cowsick. A herd of red deer lived on the moor and were said to raid gardens in Totley from time to time. Kuzneski had lived as close as he could to the Peak District while still being in the city.

He’d been on medication for bipolar disorder. But his bipolar extremes had lasted for weeks. His wife said she couldn’t remember when he’d been in a condition she would describe as ‘normal’. He’d been taking lithium carbonate and valproate, but he was troubled by the side effects of the lithium – diarrhoea and vomiting. When in a manic phase, he simply
stopped taking the medication. And the cycle began all over again.

‘I did begin to wonder whether David wanted to kill himself,’ said Stephanie Kuzneski. ‘Whether he was just waiting for the right moment, for everything to come together. He never said anything to me, but it was part of the manic depressive cycle. When he was up, he made plans. When he was down, he knew it was all useless. After a while, I don’t think he could convince himself there was a future, no matter how hard he tried. How hard we
all
tried, everyone who cared about him.’

She got up and walked to the window to stare out at the road, with her back to Cooper so he couldn’t see her face. He sat quietly and waited, trying to pretend he wasn’t there while she collected her thoughts.

‘That condition,’ she said. ‘It possessed him as surely as any demon. And in David’s case there was no hope of exorcism. He once told me it was like having your own personal bully. A voice inside your head constantly telling you how rubbish you are, banging on and on about how you’ve failed in every single thing you’ve tried to do, destroyed every relationship you’ve had. It tells you over and over that you’ve let everyone down. That you might as well … Well, you know …’

‘Yes, I know.’

Mrs Kuzneski took a deep, ragged breath before she continued. ‘He told me the voices were saying, “
The pain will never end. It’s time for you to die. You know you want to die
.”’

Cooper shook his head in frustration. ‘He shouldn’t
have reached that stage,’ he said. ‘If things had been done properly for him.’

‘I know. But it’s a bit late now to look back and say how things might have been done differently. In the end, David was still in control of his own fate.’

‘I suppose that’s true. Did you ever see a card like this in your husband’s possession?’ asked Cooper, showing her the
Secrets of Death
business card from Roger Farrell’s car.

Mrs Kuzneski went pale. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I found one in his jacket pocket.’

‘What did you do with it?’

‘I burned it,’ she said. ‘Was that the wrong thing to do?’

‘I suppose it can’t be helped.’

‘And there were some extra tablets too. What was left of the lithium he’d bought online. He must have known exactly how many he needed to take.’

Stephanie Kuzneski gazed into the distance, as if running the whole episode through her mind.

‘David hated taking tablets, you know,’ she said. ‘He insisted it was unnatural. He said the drugs were taking his personality away and changing him into a different person, someone he didn’t like.’

‘I think that’s quite common,’ said Cooper. ‘It must have been difficult for you to deal with.’

She nodded. ‘I often used to nag him to take his tablets. He took no notice of me. And what could I do? He was as difficult to handle in that phase as he was when he was depressed. He was a grown man, for goodness’ sake. I couldn’t physically force him to take them.’

‘Of
course not.’

Finally, she turned away from the window and looked at Cooper again.

‘I think he was right, too,’ she said. ‘The medication
had
changed him into someone else. And it was a person I didn’t like very much either. Definitely not the man I fell in love with and married. In a way, his death was a release. For both of us.’

As Cooper was leaving Totley, his mobile rang and a number he didn’t recognise came up on the screen. He was always cautious about unidentified numbers. They often turned out to be randomly generated sales calls. But something made him answer this one rather than let it go to voicemail.

‘Hello?’ he said.

‘Hi. It’s Chloe Young,’ replied a woman’s voice.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Dr Young, from the mortuary. We met over a dead body.’

He heard the laugh in her voice and recognised her then.

‘Oh, Dr Young. Of course. What can I do for you?’

‘Juliana van Doon found your number for me. I was wondering whether you had more time yet.’

‘For …?’

‘Well, to talk about my suicide study,’ she said. ‘Informally, you know. Since you said you were interested. I thought it might be good to get another perspective on the subject from an experienced police officer.’

‘Oh,
I see. When were you thinking of?’

‘Tonight?’

Cooper was surprised by his own inner response – that sudden warm rush, the upsurge of hope. It was a feeling he hadn’t experienced for a long time, not since Liz’s death. But he recognised in himself a growing need for something, for someone new. Perhaps it was time to stop mourning.

‘I’ll be free in an hour or two,’ he said.

‘Excellent. Do you know where the Barrel Inn is?’

‘The one at Bretton? Certainly. It isn’t far from where I live.’

‘Seven-thirty or so?’

‘Fine. I’ll see you there.’

Cooper ended the call. He wasn’t quite sure what had just happened. Perhaps he would find out tonight.

In the CID room at West Street, Cooper went first to speak to Luke Irvine, who sometimes needed nudging to get results from the jobs he’d been given. In particular, some hint of a connection to the card in Roger Farrell’s car was a priority.
Secrets of Death
was starting to bother him.

‘Ben, we’ve got a result from our appeals in the media,’ said Carol Villiers.

Cooper looked round. ‘What appeals?’

‘For potential witnesses who were parked at Heeley Bank the night Roger Farrell killed himself.’

‘Of course.’

Cooper had put the appeals to the back of his mind. They
had just been a gesture really. He hadn’t expected anything to come of them. So this was a stroke of luck.

‘Anyone credible?’ he said.

‘A couple from Chesterfield got in touch. We got lucky with them – they weren’t too far away and saw the piece in the local news.’

‘Are they coming in to see us?’

‘They’re on their way now. In fact, they’ll be here soon.’

‘Great.’

Barely half an hour later, Villiers escorted a couple of visitors to the first floor and knocked on Cooper’s office door.

‘This is Mr and Mrs Cook,’ she said.

‘Gareth and Barbara,’ said the man who stepped forward to shake his hand.

‘Thank you very much for coming in.’

‘It’s no problem,’ said Mrs Cook. ‘We’ll be happy if we can help at all. It was a terrible thing to happen.’

The couple sat down in his little office, which was hardly big enough for three people. They pulled their chairs as close together as possible and Barbara Cook took her husband’s hand, as if for reassurance.

Cooper could see from the start that they were the sort of people who had never been in a police station before, not for any reason. Possibly they were among those lucky members of the public who had never even encountered a police officer and didn’t know quite what to expect. It might depend what TV crime dramas they were used to watching. Their expectations
might have been shaped by anything between
Midsomer Murders
and
The Wire
.

So Cooper smiled and offered them tea, which they declined. He eased them into the session by asking them about themselves and how often they visited the Peak District. He learned that they’d met each other as members of a group of conservation volunteers on a tree-planting project near Grindleford, that they’d only been married two years and had no children yet. He told them he’d volunteered himself once and had been allocated to a footpath construction and repair team on the edge of Bleaklow.

‘It was January,’ he said. ‘We were soaked and freezing cold. I admire the people who keep going back time after time.’

He watched them relax and they began to tell him about their visit to Heeley Bank. They’d been there for a walk in the woods and down to the river. They’d also bought some flapjacks in the information centre and eaten them in their car with a flask of coffee. Cooper gathered that the Cooks were keen people-watchers. They noticed things.

He slid across the photograph of Roger Farrell.

‘And you recognised this man?’ he said.

Barbara Cook grimaced. ‘Yes, we’re quite sure it was him we saw. Aren’t we, Gareth?’

Her husband nodded. And then he described seeing Farrell leave his BMW and go into the information centre. That was news to Cooper. Marnie Letts hadn’t mentioned it.

‘What time would that be?’

‘Oh,
perhaps about four o’clock. Not long before we left.’

‘He wasn’t in the centre for long,’ said Barbara. ‘He came out again. And then he spoke to someone.’

‘He did? Who?’

‘We don’t know. Sorry. It was just a man, standing over by the toilet block. They only spoke for a minute or two.’

‘We couldn’t really see them very well because of the sun,’ said Gareth. ‘It was shining from that direction and they were in the shadows. You know what I mean?’

‘Yes.’

Cooper questioned them gently for a few minutes to see if they could remember any other details, but they seemed to have exhausted their information. They were trying very hard, too, he could see that.

Finally, he ran out of questions and sat back to look at them. The Cooks stirred in the chairs, as if about to leave. Then Gareth Cook reached into his pocket.

‘Oh, and there’s this,’ he said.

‘What is it?’

He handed Cooper a small blue case containing a memory card.

‘We have a dashcam,’ said his wife. ‘Gareth bought it after he had a collision in the car last year and the other driver wouldn’t accept liability.’

‘It was a total nightmare,’ said Gareth. ‘I was going backwards and forwards with insurance companies for months and the worst thing was they didn’t seem to believe me. I lost my excess in the end. Three hundred pounds. So now I’ve got proof, if it happens again.’

‘Unless
someone hits you from behind,’ said Barbara.

‘Well, I’d have to install another camera on the back shelf to cover that, wouldn’t I?’

Cooper held up the case. ‘You’re telling me you had your dashboard camera operating during the time you were parked at Heeley Bank that day?’

‘Only while the engine was running, obviously. But there should be some footage to look at. It’s a sixteen-gigabyte micro SD card and we get nearly three hours of recording from the camera before it starts to overwrite the earliest files.’

‘Thank you, Mr Cook,’ said Cooper, feeling genuinely grateful for something for the first time all week.

‘You’re welcome. We hope it helps, we really do.’

‘It was a terrible thing,’ said Barbara.

When the Cooks had left West Street, Cooper took the memory card to Luke Irvine.

‘What’s this?’ asked Irvine.

‘It’s footage from a dashboard camera.’

‘Do you want to view it?’

‘Of course.’

‘No problem. This PC has a card reader.’

When the video started, the quality on screen was surprisingly good. Unfortunately, the first half-hour had recorded the Cooks’ journey all the way from the drive of their home in Chesterfield. There were glimpses of a Tesco Extra, the Proact Stadium where Chesterfield FC played, then a scenic drive out past the Old Pump in Barlow before they even reached the boundary of the national park near Unthank.